


On Cat(alina)

by TanukiKyle



Series: Girl Genius OC Collection [3]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, OC backstory, Which will eventually be relevant to other fics I am writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 08:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14352141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TanukiKyle/pseuds/TanukiKyle
Summary: Cat grows up being told to hide herself. But you can only hide so long...





	1. Age 0

**Author's Note:**

> I live and I'm still writing girl genius content just slowly! :D

Catalina is born in a high tower overlooking the lake. In her Mother's eyes, she is perfect. Ten tiny toes, ten tiny fingers, a chubby face and big, dark, baby-blue eyes. (Later they will fade to the more traditional house colour.) 

Her husband, head of House Ilves, holds her hand whilst she gives birth and coaches her. Kisses her forehead when she cries, wipes her tears away with a callused thumb. When she was married to another noble she expected her own smooth skin, perfect. In the end, she prefers his Spark-rough hands. They’re gentle where it matters, and many smooth-skilled nobles are not. She knows that. (Her smooth hands were taught poison and dagger as befits a scion of house Sturmvoraus, and she prefers his honest clank-builders hands. They are both as dangerous, as deadly, but there is honesty, in his. House Ilves is as yet kind in it’s own way, and she finds it refreshing.)

As he takes their child in his beefy arms, well. If he cries, nobody mentions it. It is his firstborn. And she is a particularly beautiful babe. 

The staff coo over her. The various members of the family bring gifts. (Quietly, Andrea looks each one over. She finds nothing of interest, and for not the first time she is baffled by how direct this family is. She does keep the ceremonial weapons away from her child as yet, though.)

Life continues on. Her husband builds clanks to protect the people, conspires with other Houses about how to protect their borders from outside powers. She tears down coups from the inside, quietly slips poison into rebels drinks. (Nobody suspects a woman feeding a babe.)

And at the end of the day she curls in his arms and she feels safe.

It is a long time since she has felt safe.

Later, Andrea will laugh bitterly at her naivety.


	2. Age 1

When Catalina is a year old, she has her first assassination attempt. She doesn’t recognise it - all she knows is that one day she is with a Nanny, and the next she is back with her mother.

(Andrea spends hours quietly sorting poisons. She should have known better. She’ll start the Smoke Knight training with Catalina tomorrow.)


	3. Age 2

The coups go quiet, and Andrea recognises this as a warning sign. There’s no way that rebellion has suddenly quietened. They’ve got clever, or they’ve found her out. Either way is worrying. She finds herself observing her personal staff, trying to work out loyalties and who she could manipulate into helping her.

More than that, she starts being stringent about her loved one’s safety. Oh she doesn’t have many, and once upon a time her great goal in life was to have none. Bound by duty but not love. But life has a way of changing things, and now she finds herself in love twice over. With Catalina, but she half-expected that due to biology. But….Alphonse, Alphonse she expected to tolerate. Have a cordial relationship with if she was lucky, and maybe even like him. But here she is, a weak-kneed teenager with him - for the very first time. She loves him, and it’s the most terrifying thing she’s ever done.


	4. Age 3

It is this love than blinds her. 

Alphonse trusts his brother explicitly, and Catalina is influenced by it, and even if she doesn’t trust him the same way, she never thinks of him as a traitor, never even considers him to be the one that’s trying to hurt them. 

Later, she will review every interaction they ever have and realise how careful he was, how he played her as well as he played her husband.

For now, she prays to goddesses she doesn’t believe in as she doses Catalina with sleeping draught and bundles her daughter into a false compartment she thought she’d never have to use. As her golden eyes glaze over and slip shut, as she folds Catalina’s limbs carefully and tucks the toddler inside, she allows herself to shake, furious and afraid. 

When she looks in the mirror to make the last adjustments, there isn’t a shake to be seen. Nor is there much of her, to be honest. Red hair dyed grey and worn in a peasant’s style, and clothing carefully, carefully sourced from servants. Lines in her face, hands roughened with a paste. She looks old, tired, worn in the way working people are. The horse is a little too fine, so she rubs a little dirt on the patient, steadfast mare who’s already had her spark-silver horseshoes swapped for coarse iron. The cart is - or at least appears - to be basic.

She’s ready. 

She leaves the castle with the rest of the early-morning traders, joining the caravans that thread their way through the misty valleys to the outer borders. If she’s lucky, they’ll be long gone by the time word reaches this far.

But she’s not counting on luck. If she had been lucky, her husband would still be breathing. If she had been lucky Alfred wouldn’t have turned out to be a traitor. Yes, if she were lucky things would be different.   
She doses Catalina twice more before they reach the border. Makes small talk with the other traders, subtle inquiries about where they’re heading. She’s going to have to break off from them at some point, but it’s safer to travel in a group for as long as possible. On the other hand, she can only dose Catalina safely for so long. 

At the border, the gates are closed, and the train of carts and wagons pulls to a stop. 

She offers another fruitless prayer as she joins the clamour of questions.

“The Lord has been murdered. His wife, Lady Andrea has stolen the heir, young Catalina. We have to check your wagons, make sure she’s not stowed away in them.”

There’s murmurs of dissent. Andrea doesn’t care why. Once she would have listened carefully, figured out whether the horror is at the murder, the kidnapping, the stop of the wagons - but now, now she just gets down from the driving seat carefully and waits for the guards to check her cart. 

It’s filled with basic supplies for travelling, and fine - but not too fine- cloths for trade.

 

(it’s also filled with many other things, but this is not just any cart.)

(this is her husband’s sparkwork, built to assuage the fears of a worrying wife. Showing her they had an escape plan.)

(Later, she had thought they’d never need it.)

(She spends a moment wishing it were the three of them escaping, even though she knows Alphonse would never have left.)

As the guards sort through she makes sure they’re careful with her goods, like any good trader. Then she waits as they check the next cart, and the next, and the next. Gives her horse a pat and some water. Leans her head against the horse’s neck, breathing in the scent of horse, allows for the briefest of moments her fear to show on her face.

The moment ends, and she breathes, gets back on the cart, and gently clicks her tongue.

They move towards an uncertain future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last of what I have prewritten for Catalina! Expect more at some point, but probably not until I've updated some of my WIP GG fics first. :3


End file.
